Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Arrgh!

OK, obviously I’ve pissed off the universe today.

I had a post finished, and my Internet connection dropped out.

I went back to writing while I waited for the connection to come back up.

Some friends called, they were cleaning a Ruger Mk III 22cal pistol. They’d taken it apart and couldn’t get it back together properly. The slide kept jamming. This is a common problem with this particular weapon, like most weapons there’s a trick to reassembling it correctly – and the Ruger is a bigger pain in the ass than most, it's like German engineering, or rather over-engineering. (Update, Note: just to be clear, Ruger is an American weapon). I hate Rugers, they're fine weapons, don’t get me wrong, but it’s like working on a BMW – you’ve got to be a humpbacked four-armed, left-handed, googly-eyed midget to work on the damned thing. Also it helps if you know how to swear in German. You have to point the barrel down while inserting the main spring, then flip the weapon over so the barrel points up and the hammer lever drops into the pivot slot on mainspring lever. Only then can you tension the spring and close the housing. If you don’t do this correctly, the hammer is forced up into the firing position and doesn’t retract, which means the slide jams against it. This process sounds easy, and it is, but it’s not something you can talk somebody through on the phone. So I had them come over and showed them how to properly disassemble and reassemble the weapon. If it seems odd that they didn’t know how to take apart their own weapon, well, it’s a 22cal Ruger. A weapon like that gets cleaned about once a decade, usually (unless you’re anal retentive about it like I am and clean them after every firing. A clean weapon is a happy weapon. Just sayin’).

OK great, got that done. Just as I was heading inside to check the Internet connection, the power went out.

It came back on after five minutes.

I wasn’t worried, both my word processor and blog editor are set to back up every couple of minutes.

Except, of course, they didn’t.

I lost the entire blog post and 2000 words of the novel. Goddamn it all to hell.

Also did I mention that this week is spring break? No? Well it is. So the 12-year old is under foot all day, which is why you’re not getting anything deep, blogging wise.

And now the Internet is back up and I’ve got nothing for you, deep or otherwise.

So, here have some ShopKat:

[Note the visual pun: Copy Cat, hardee har har]

Apparently the paper towels gave her some attitude, ShopKat doesn’t take that kind of shit lying down. Certainly the paper towels will think twice about offending her again. Oh, yes, they will.

Before you ask, yes that’s her box. It’s full of old towels and it sits on the work bench next to my carving station. Because otherwise we have issues over who owns that chair. Once I put the box on the workbench, she stopped trying to kick me out of my chair, and if you don’t think a two pound cat can kick a 180 pound combat veteran out of his own chair, you’d be wrong, wrong, wrong, I direct your attention to the aforementioned paper towels.

Hence the box. Now everybody is happy.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out why the backup didn’t work and recreate ten pages of novel.

It would appear that ShopKat is simply overfed and not knocked up after all.

I have to take all the animals in this week for a check up. I'll have her tested. And no, John, she does not appear to have worms either - which are uncommon here in alaska.

Karl, very similar, though ShopKat is more black than white.

And now that I've mostly recreated the lost chapter, mostly, I need to head out to the shop and turn a couple of bowls. The bowl I did for Aliy and Allen got some attention and a couple other people want one similar. So, you know, yay!

I think I'd be spitting mad at losing 2000 words. Although, for the current project, I know I've written some pieces before that I'm now stringing together, but I can't find the original writing. So I recreated the scenes, which (at least to my mind) I think I did a better job of it the second time around.

Maybe shop cat was also frustrated by the poor internet service and figured the paper towels had something to do with it. It's a known fact that cats get frustrated when they can pull down their twitter feeds.

Chris, you are, of course, correct in that Sturm Ruger is an American Firearms company and both founders were Americans. But the MKIII is based on the German recoil system, not the Browning Fast Recoil system. I think they're over engineered and too complicated, especially that goofy mainspring assembly.

Revolver wise, I think Ruger makes fine revolvers - but for various reasons they just don't fit my hands or shooting style. I don't like either the Blackhawk or the Redhawk and I think they suffer in comparison to the Colt Anaconda.

But then again, I swear by Colt firearms, and was one of the very last guys to carry the Colt 1911A1 Government Model .45ACP on active duty - because I despise the Beretta 9mm above damn near all other firearms. I also went to Colt Armorer's School and to Smith & Wesson Range Master Academy and Tactical Survivors School - so I may be a little prejudiced against Ruger.

I have very pleasant memories of standing in the basement range at the NROTC building at Northwestern, firing the 1911A1 under the tutelage of a very crusty and wise (and amusing) USMC gunnery sergeant. He always joked that I should only ever shoot one shot with the .45, because every damned day my first round would be dead center in the target and then I'd be high and right on all the rest due to anticipating the recoil. (grin) Stupid human tricks.

I should point out that these were regular classes listed under Phys. Ed. and most of the time we shot .22 target rifles and .22 target pistols -- the .45s were a treat for those of us who qualified with exceptional scores.

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Jim Wright is a retired US Navy Chief Warrant Officer and freelance writer. He lived longer in Alaska than anywhere else and misses it terribly. He recently moved to the fetid Panhandle of Florida and lives now in an ancient Cold War bunker of a house surrounded by alligators and rednecks. He's been called the Tool of Satan, but he prefers to think of himself as the Devil's Designated Driver. He is the mind behind Stonekettle Station. You can email him at jim@stonekettle.com. You can follow him on Twitter @stonekettle, or you can join the boisterous bunch he hosts on Facebook at Facebook/Stonekettle. Remember to bring brownies and mind the white cat, he bites. Hard.

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